


it does me no good to be good to me now

by bioluminesce



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:15:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27596036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bioluminesce/pseuds/bioluminesce
Summary: When Sylens opens a locked door Aloy can't, their unlikely partnership reignites old arguments.
Relationships: Aloy & Sylens (Horizon: Zero Dawn)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	it does me no good to be good to me now

**Author's Note:**

> Title by Louis Gluck. That's a bit of a poem looking for a fanfic, I said to my friend, and it was. This is an odd little sketch about discomfort and regret, I suppose. There are a lot of things I don't want it to be that it might look like, and some things I would like it to be that it never got around to.

The sun set over the Western desert as Aloy discovered she couldn’t open a Cauldron door.

Nothing seemed wrong with the first Cauldron door she had encountered in the West. It just wouldn’t respond to her Focus, to the override device she had reverse-engineered, or to kicking. The red-orange, striated stone walls tucked tight around it offered no handholds or tunnels. Aloy slammed a hand against the cold metal, her armor shimmering in response. She had hoped to explore the Cauldron before evening. She glanced up at the sky, wondering how much time she had before the stars came out. Now, it seemed one of the first mysteries she had encountered in the West might never be solved. 

Just as the thud of her slam faded away, her Focus crackled. 

“Having trouble?” 

_Sylens._ Anger flared. Aloy knew he had taken HADES and the master override with him after she planted it in the Spire. Betrayal mingled with the comfort she had felt when he finally explained everything about the GAIA site and his own involvement. 

“How nice of you to notice.” She spoke into her own Focus. 

“I happened to see you.” 

“You what?” _He was here?_ Aloy immediately put her back to the door and scanned the area. No human silhouette appeared on the Focus overlay. 

“Look up,” Sylens said.

She did. He stood on the ridge behind the entrance, just too high for her scan to catch. He was hunched over, his heavy pack obscuring his silhouette but for the neon stripes across his arms. 

Slowly he climbed down, pausing to adjust something he could see on his own overlay as he went. When he reached the ground, the door began sliding open. 

Aloy jogged with the door to the cliff side, getting ready to fight any machine that might be lurking at the entrance. But all she saw was one of the walls of blue-purple cables that made up the guts of the Cauldron, as if it hadn’t quite been built according to the original floor plan. Nothing emerged to attack her. With no machines to fight, Aloy chose her next target. She put distance, the length of the Broadhead mount she had ridden here, between her and the tinker.

Sylens kept talking as he descended. Red rocks skittered down the cliffside. Carja lands were so close she could practically smell them, but she had passed a sparsely guarded gate miles back, and the guards there had made it clear the unknown waited on the other side. Aloy certainly hadn’t expected to see someone she knew so soon. Especially someone who had every reason to avoid her. But nor did she think it was right to attack him right away. He wasn't as bad as Helis ... was he? Why _didn't_ she want to point her spear at his throat?

“Unusual.” Sylens thumped heavily down onto the dirt, crushing some of the hardy weeds. “The override was corrupted because these linkages were installed in the wrong place. I would never have known this if you hadn’t mapped so many Cauldrons out from the inside.” 

“What are you doing here?”

“Going West, just like you are. Don’t worry, I don’t plan to stay. I saw the signal of this Cauldron just like you did.”

“It’s a symbol I’ve never seen before.”

“Yes. Fascinating.” 

“Why would this door be corrupted when none of the others are?”

“One thousand years have passed. I know your extraordinary luck has brought you through many doorways before, but don’t be surprised when some of them are simply too far gone, or weren’t built perfectly to plan.”

Aloy’s anger flared. She remembered too well that the last time Sylens had brought up his feelings about how easily she explored ruins, it was at the same time as her world was falling apart. He had taken her grief at never having a mother — a feeling which had since become less painful and less complicated when she learned more about GAIA — as an opportunity to make the conversation about himself.

“Or you’re setting me up for something.” Aloy looked up to meet his eyes. They still stood enough of a distance from one another not to imply a fight was coming. “I don’t know the West as well as you do. And it’s obvious you’ll take advantage of that.” 

As he had in the past, Sylens had refused to let Aloy know where he was physically staying. The stakes were even higher now because she knew he had taken his spear, and the remnant of HADES. Trusting him was more out of the question than it had ever been. 

But most of Aloy’s life had been spent assuming other people weren’t trustworthy and wouldn’t trust her in turn. Rost had done well to provide her a warm home life, but almost everyone else she encountered throughout her young life would not have deigned to notice her if they had seen her falling off a cliff. She wanted to be better than them. But she also didn’t expect that much from the world. 

Sylens raised his hands. “Look at that shielded armor you’re wearing. How could I be a physical threat to you? Let me go with you into the Cauldron. Just once. I’ll stay so far back, you could shoot me long before I raised a hand.” 

“The only thing I trust about you is that you’ll use every possible other option before actually putting yourself in a fight. So I guess, in that case, I’m just as safe with you as with the machines.” 

There was something reassuring about how honest Sylens was about his duplicitousness. Likewise, something satisfying about the way he was the half-invisible exile now, not her. She could be the standard against which he pushed. It was same the way she pushed against some aspect of every culture she had ever encountered, either as a member or an outsider. 

Sylens shrugged, giving no indication he showed any interest in either her spoken or unspoken train of thoughts.

“Stay back,” Aloy said. “But you can come with me. You earned it, this time.” 

* * *

A winding hallway made of glowing cables deposited Aloy out into a Cauldron assembly line partially open to the elements. Machinery climbed red rocks toward an eye-shaped opening in the high ceiling, the moon near the horizon looking huge with perspective like a drifting pupil in the eye. She tapped her Focus and found the digital trails of several Watchers throughout the cavern.

Sylens kept his word in that he kept out of the way. When he next spoke, Aloy was mid-way through jamming her spear into a Watcher’s throat. She had already fought her way through two rooms filled with conveyor drones. She levered the Watcher’s body over as its light sparked and died, unable to hear everything Sylens said over the crash of the robot onto the floor. Her own breathing sounded loud in her ears on top of that. 

“…I set you up for something in here?” Sylens said, his words crisp. “There’s nothing in Cauldrons I want that I can’t find in machines walking around the world.”

Aloy leaned on her spear and turned to look into the shadows behind her as she stood. “That’s exactly what someone who wanted something in a Cauldron would say. Why are you even still talking to me, otherwise?”

This time, the lack of an answer was satisfying. She had gotten the last word. With renewed energy, she headed to the next room. 

Even though he wasn’t far behind her, Sylens’ voice still crackled through the Focus, creating an echo as Aloy walked wide steps farther down into the Cauldron. “I dedicated decades to trying to open doors like these, just to see you walk through them easily because of your DNA.”

Aloy had answers ready. “I had to learn to do it, too. I fell, and fought Deathbringers, and saw people die because of what I learned. And since you know how to build Focuses and overrides, you can already do most of the things I can do.” 

“If you’re attempting to comfort me, it’s coming too late.” 

“I wasn’t.” 

The rest of the cauldron wound through a canyon. Red rock walls accented the familiar purple-veined machinery. For a while Sylens was silent while Aloy concentrated on puzzling her way around the automated assembly line. Cargo drones whizzed and distant construction crashed around her. 

At the heart of the Cauldron, the tiny, sparking fingers of metal extruders were printing a mechanical animal Aloy had never seen before. A tentacle like the leg of a Titan dominated its face between two fearsome tusks. Some kind of mutant boar? 

The fight against it was new and difficult. Aloy narrowly escaped streams of nanomachines that cracked against her shield. The Tremortusk’s weaknesses were buried beneath heavy plate. Finally, the tide of the battle turned when the Tremortusk fell to a knee, dropped by a trap placed by not Aloy, but Sylens. Forced to descend into the factory-turned-arena with her, he darted around the machine. Both of them were too distracted to argue, now. By the end of the fight they were coordinating, Sylens freezing a component before Aloy tore it off the machine with an arrow. 

Finally, the Tremortusk slumped to the ground, going dark, its body so large that Aloy was forced to back against the wall so as not to be crushed. She stared up at it, marveling at the strange, new shape. She had been told machines out here were fearsome, and they surely were. Even the watchers were more heavily armored and more noble than the ones she was used to. Surely GAIA had a reason why. But this … What vast construction project dictated this creature should exist? And what animal that GAIA had mourned had inspired its form?

On the other side of one of the tree-trunk legs, she heard Sylens start to dismantle the machine, starting at the belly. He had been trained to use machine parts skillfully before betraying the very people who had taught him. 

Aloy busied herself excavating the machine’s heart. The dimly glowing orange core was as big around as a human head, and hung by delicately balanced wires that snapped and threatened to pin her hands if Aloy didn’t extricate it right. Finally, she lifted herself up from where she had had to crawl half-way into the machine.

Sylens was standing behind her. He stood close, not threateningly so, but closer than before. He could have reached out a hand to touch her. 

Aloy raised an eyebrow. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.” 

“You found the heart?”

“Yeah. It’s a beauty.”

“I could use that.”

Aloy sighed. “So could I.” She set the heart on the floor to free her hands, then propped a foot on it. “I’m not going to give it to you to help you with HADES.”

“Not for my own sake? I’m as new to this land as you are. Studying this would help me know what to expect from these machines. Let me live longer here.” 

“What? Really? You’re looking for my kindness now? Back in that tunnel, you said comfort was too late,” Aloy said. “Did you give me any sign you expected any before? We might have had a very different conversation in the Cut if you had offered any comfort.” 

He stepped back, slashed his hand through the air. “Forgive me for trying to speak your language. Then forget comfort. I mean to talk about whether you could understand even a scrap of what it was like for me trying to dig GAIA out with the technology I had available.”

“This is still about that?” The rimed surface of that door … the cold climb up. 

Aloy could imagine it: how long he worked, fighting off machines that wanted his scrap and cold that nearly took his fingers, plus the threat of Helis one day deciding to turn his masochism on his own people. She could linger on the work, the effort, the way he did. But she couldn’t _stay_ there. 

“I might have pitied you if you just stopped before mentioning how hard it was for you to help the cult that killed Rost, and almost killed me! You’re the last person I could feel sorry for!”

“I am not telling you this so you can feel sorry for me. I am telling you why I’m here.” 

She kept her foot on the machine heart. The metal rang slightly as the rounded edges rocked against the floor. “For this.” 

“No!” His denial echoed. “I asked for it because it’s interesting, and useful. I came here because I’ve never been inside this Cauldron before.” He turned around, looking up and down the wreckage and the platform where a brand-new machine might have been lifted onto the earth if Aloy hadn’t destroyed it. His voice softened. “Underneath everything, I just want to see more. More of what was lost, like APOLLO. More of what is coming, like HADES and GAIA … and _you_. Just … more. And for so long, the world fought back. Doors didn’t open. Puzzles stumped me after years of trying, years of slow progress. Until you came along and opened them all with ease. You let me see the world. Before that, I thought everyone had an uphill road. I thought no one could have discovered more than I ever did. And now … you do. Every day.”

From someone else the words might have sounded complementary, even worshipful in that way she hated, but from him they sounded bitter. She blew out a breath. “It isn’t my fault GAIA only had one daughter.”

“No. But do you begrudge me enjoying one victory?”

By now, Aloy had relaxed her guard a little. She didn’t think Sylens wanted more from her now than the death of the Tremortusk. If he had a larger plan, it would have to wait. And after all, HADES wasn’t here, Aloy knew. Nothing had ever stopped HADES from attacking Elisabet’s clone on sight before, so if he hadn’t emerged, he wasn’t here. Sylens, his motives human, could still be hiding something from her. But she didn’t think he was a good enough actor to lie about the mix of wonder and sadness in his expression as he looked at the new Cauldron. She knew he preferred to lie by omission. 

_I could get to know the person who never lies about being untrustworthy. Mutual self-interest got us this far._ She looked far, far up at the cargo elevator door above them, too, appreciating the beauty of the Cauldron. Standing in a new place with him felt like it shouldn’t be possible. More than novelty, it was strange freedom.

Aloy looked back at Sylens. “You don’t have to only have one, you know. You could come with me. We can destroy HADES, together, and find out more about the world, the right way.”

He held her gaze long enough that she thought he might be considering. His expressions were always cold, but underneath the ice she thought she saw sadness, conflict, even a warmth that made him look younger and more regal. 

“Even if I followed you to the end of the world, there would still be ways you can walk where I’m not permitted to go.” He shrugged. “That’s built into the nature of this world. So is HADES. I need to use him. He’s too powerful to completely remove from our knowledge. It would be like losing APOLLO again.” 

“Why does everything have to be about knowledge? About APOLLO?” Aloy felt like slamming her spear against the ground. The machine heart rocked. She had tried kindness so many times, and he still wouldn’t listen! 

“Oh, you know the answer to that one,” Sylens said. “APOLLO contained the entirety of human history, everything about ourselves. Don’t patronize me directly now, Aloy, not when you’ve done it without thinking for so long. Just like Ourea did. All we have is what we know, and Elisabet gave every key to you.” His voice softened. “Nothing to me.” 

“Now you want to blame Elisabet? Anyone except yourself, right? She couldn’t have known anything that’s happening to us would happen. Not to mention one man spending his whole life looking for secrets in all the wrong ways, seeing all that collateral damage, just to be cruel when he’s told he isn’t _special!_ ” Aloy’s shouts echoed off the angles of the room, bouncing up and up toward unseen sunlight. 

Sylens sighed. The shadow of the Tremortusk fell over his face as he stepped back from her and gestured at the machine heart. His voice was even, the depth she had seen behind the ice gone. “Take it. I’ll find another one soon enough. Now, are you going to override this platform, or will I need to climb back out the long way?”

Aloy growled. “This isn’t over.”

“This conversation? I think it is. We both learned something in here, and that’s all I wanted.”

 _Anything else he would say could sound like a plea for pity, and he’s too proud for that._ She jammed her spear against the override port. Her thoughts raced as the platform began to move, shedding splinters of rainbow light and a cloud of expected but always shockingly cold fog. The last of the daylight glimmered from above. She stole glances at the man standing with his arms crossed on the far side of the platform, near the fire-blackened foot of the machine. 

_I understand why he would be frustrated when I can walk paths he can’t. But he joined the Eclipse before he knew me. He stole from the Conclave before he knew me. None of that was about Elisabet. If it was about some kind of fear, some feeling of inferiority he can’t shake … that isn’t my problem, and it wasn’t before he helped start a war, either._

Still, she found herself still looking at him, wondering what it would be like if their roles were reversed. If she had wanted to explore as badly as he did, but had never found the Focus, or had been a natural-born Nora, like Vala or Teb. Would she be as frightened of ruins as they were? If not, wouldn’t she resent them for keeping her away for no reason, only to enter the ruins and find there was nothing really there for her either? The world would look so gray, if that had been the result of her delving. 

Or it wouldn’t. It didn’t for Petra, or Laulai, who delved for their own reasons and enjoyed the result without ever knowing why their metal treasures existed. Sylens had wanted more, and it hadn’t been given to him. And even if he was given the world, maybe it wouldn’t be enough. 

The elevator creaked to a halt. The Broadhead Aloy had left at the entrance raised its horns from where it had been pulling up resilient desert weeds. She walked toward it without looking back. 

“Disappear,” she said over her shoulder. “It’s what you’re good at.” 

Sylens sighed. Aloy imagined he sounded sad, not exasperated. 

She turned around. Tossed the heavy machine heart at him. He fumbled it, finally clutched it against his legs and looked up at her from an awkward hunch. Holding a heart, Aloy thought. _His or mine. Or one he never had. He’s like a machine. Maybe that part was never installed._

But didn’t Aloy feel that way herself, sometimes? She had never had enough heart to stay with any of the people who had asked her to. They hadn’t been the right fits, hadn’t given her the familial love only GAIA could, hadn’t been able to save the world like GAIA could. But she wondered sometimes whether she was also too cold for them. She had her own moments of feeling like she had a machine heart, regardless of whether or not she had been decanted from an actual machine. 

For all her irritation, Sylens had so many times been the only person with whom she could share what she knew. The only one who even knew what all the words to describe her life meant. Did loneliness create machine hearts, or the other way around?

She swung herself onto the Broadhead, her armor clattering. When she looked back, Sylens was scanning the elevator and the wreckage upon it, not done picking through the Tremortusk parts, ignoring her last jab.  
  
She kicked her heels into the Broadhead and rode, hoping it was toward something better. 


End file.
